Wow, one hell of a trip! I just returned from almost 3 weeks of motorcycle heaven, minus a bit of driving. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries the first day, but I have already found a few pics out there. I drove out with Jay from Acme Choppers, because we both were invited to show our work at the Buffalo Chip, where Mike Lichter has his yearly show. Once the bikes were set up, we retreated to the “Thunderdome”, Jay Allens latest venture, where we had our encampment. Dale from Mad Jap was there with us and we set up one booth for all three of us, right inside the dome, complete with Dales purple couch, carpet, and ottoman.

We did a ton of riding over the course of the week, some sponsored rides and some just for fun. Matt Olson took a group of about 20 guys on the “old Iron Putt” as Jay puts it. Matt handed over the routing to Panhead Billy, who legend has it knows every road in America and doesn’t need a map-ever. He decided we should ride about 40 miles into the middle of nowhere on dirt roads. I love riding on dirt because it filters out the do-rag crowd immediately, but I don’t think there were any with us to begin with. The dust got so thick I cant believe my motor even ran but eventually we reached a clearing, where Jay unloaded a mountain of beef jerkey packets, provided free by a sponsor of his (forgot name of company). We ate them and then all parted ways.

Later in the week when the Lichter show was over, 6 of us got our bikes down from the pedestals and went for a ride, with Mike doing his typical backwards camera position on a guys bagger. The protocall is to simply get as close to each other and the bagger as humanly possible without literally getting tangled together. For some reason Mike always sets the pace at around 75, even though you cant tell in the photos, which makes it even more complicated. It is fun though, especially trying to communicate….

Icarus ran like a champ, held at 75 for about a solid hour in high heat. The homemade rockers and solid lifters are proven in my mind after that ride.

During the week we also rode to Deadwood, Spearfish Canyon, the Badlands, “The Ranch”, some random lake in the middle of nowhere east of Sturgis, and endless miles of black hills back road.

It was great to see all my friends who I only see once a year. Special thanks to Mike Lichter for letting us be in your show- it was something I had wanted to be a part of for years.

We also checked out the AMD W0rld Championships. This is the last year the show will be held in Sturgis. Apparently The next version will be in Germany. Here was the winner of this years freestyle, from Thunderbike…

Jeremy Cupps hillclimber. I have a feeling a lot of people didn’t look at this bike closely enough. It had exposed valves and rockers with a recirculating oil system plumbed through it.